General Motors Innovation & Technology Culture

It’s an exciting time to be working in automotive, as transportation goes through a transformative period across electrification, autonomy and software. With GM, there’s a huge opportunity to get the chance to scale work across brands — which includes a broad portfolio of EVs — and develop new technologies. 

How has a focus on innovation increased the quality of your team’s work? 

To me, innovation means a willingness to take big risks, move forward without having every answer and course-correct effectively along the way. Without these innovation-driven processes, it would be easy to miss opportunities or spend months spinning without action.

One great example is how we’re integrating Cruise and GM technologies. In a very short time, the team leaned into knowledge-sharing sessions, explored multiple paths through proof-of-concepts and relied heavily on the RFC process to document ideas, gather feedback and iterate quickly. These practices kept us out of silos, helped us avoid over-planning and allowed us to move quickly without losing alignment.

This approach led to immediate wins, like connecting GM’s highway data to new infrastructure, and opened up potential like using an onboard mining strategy to capture rare events by leveraging GM’s large vehicle fleet. Both instances fill important gaps where we historically lacked coverage. These initiatives are still ongoing, and I’m excited about the momentum and possibilities they’re bringing.